How to merge a remote branch into my current branch, but only stage the changes so I can evaluate and unstage them as I want?

Question

How to merge a remote branch into my current branch, but be able to see the file changes as staged changes in git. This happens sometimes, and I can edit in VSCode, but other times it automatically merges everything in.

When working in a branch I want to merge a remote branch into, I run:

git pull origin branch-name

depending on how different my working branch and this remote branch are, sometimes it stages, other times it just merges directly in.

How can I reliably get the staging to happen? thanks

Answer 1

You can ask git merge (which is implied in your git pull command) to wait for your approval (after potential edits) with the --no-commit option.

Important note from the doc:

Note that fast-forward updates do not create a merge commit and therefore there is no way to stop those merges with --no-commit. Thus, if you want to ensure your branch is not changed or updated by the merge command, use --no-ff with --no-commit.

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So, the full process would be

git pull --no-commit --no-ff origin branch-name

# check whatever you need at this point, edit files, run things
# (don't forget to add paths you modified)
# and when you're ready :

git merge --continue

...which will prompt the commit message in your editor with the automatic merge info prepared (which you can edit too).